Here for writing

Yesterday started with me feeling sad. Am taking a week long break from teaching yoga, which means I get extra 3-4 hours per day at my disposal. As usual, I started making too many plans, but somewhere, having learnt the lessons from past experiences, I forced myself to slow down with my crazy planning and reminded myself that this is a "BREAK WEEK" , which means I truly do have to take a break, rest, rejuvenate and refresh myself by doing  / not doing things as appropriate. Yesterday morning, I woke up with a head full of ideas and the mindset to actually go all out and execute them all...inspired, excited and thrilled...bright eyed and bushy tailed and what not. The darkened windows mislead me into thinking I was up early, but when I checked the time, it was already 7 am, which meant I don't have the time to actually execute all that I had in mind. Why you ask? Well, my little one, who is now 16 months, will wake up in another 45 mins to 1 hour and once she is up, there...

It has been quite a while since I had the luxury to sit in front of my laptop, opening the blogger page and tapping the keys to see my thoughts unfold into words. And it is such a gratifying feeling to be able to do this - without any agenda, without any expectations of what will flow out or whether it will be interesting or boring or relevant or irrelevant. Just the simple act of being able to articulating the thoughts is a reward unto itself. The recent events in my life has made me understand the magic that each moment holds. Whatever maybe the external situation, no matter the grief, frustration, anger etc etc, if I pause for a moment, there is pure magic waiting in that moment.  The beauty of this life is its uncertainty. Anything can happen to anyone at anytime. Yet, here we are, planning and securing our future. No doubt it is essential, but in all the doing, to loose sight of just being is the biggest tragedy!  It is so profound to experience every moment in its entire...

I rarely engage in social media. My feed is mostly full of quotes and pictures of the Masters, yoga videos and cat/dog other animal videos. The posts that I put up will either be related to yoga / vedanta / special needs. To preserve my own sanity, I have unfollowed people who post either extreme left or extreme right posts, posts that glorify / demean religion or caste etc.  One cannot deny that social media has tremendous power in shaping people's opinion, give a glimpse of lived experiences of those whom we otherwise may not come across in real life, provide a platform for everyone to voice their side of the story, raise awareness of issues that are not spotlighted by main stream media etc. It is a wonderful tool, a great boon to connect people across the world, it can broaden our horizons...basically it has unlimited power. And we all know that it is a double edged sword. I am not going to get into the pros and cons of social media.  Instead, I would like...

Leaving aside the social, economic, environmental, political and all other aspects of this Covid-19 pandemic, I just want to dwell and delve within for a moment. We can distract ourselves by looking at the screen of our smart phones and computers and other devices for only so long. With all other avenues of distraction out of our reach, there is no choice but to face the monsters within.  The monster that I had to face was guilt. The irony here is, I didn't even know that guilt monster was actually lurking in my sub conscious, waiting to surface up unawares, grab me by my throat and drag me under...choking me in its vicious grip. The reason it caught me unaware was that it has always disguised itself under various names and forms -the urge to be productive, to be constantly engaged in action, to be useful, to be successful, to excel in all that I do, to confirm to expectations of living a certain way, ticking off milestones, earning a certain amount of money, the ...

Before we start, here are the quick links to Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 & Part 4 .  It has been slightly more than a year since I wrote about oneness. I ended part 4 by saying how to put the theory of oneness into practice. To be honest, I didn't know how to put into practice at that time. Ever since, this unwritten piece has been always in my mind. I became more observant of myself and was constantly seeing how I was putting the theory into practice, so that I can finally finish this series. There were many attempts at finishing this...more than 10 drafts that were ruthlessly discarded over the year. After all, it is so easy to intellectually dissect a topic and give convincing arguments, but applying it practically in our lives is a different ball game all together. However, being completely convinced on an intellectual level helped me put my heart & soul into this journey.  Once, during a Satsang, Guruji Swami Tejomayananda mentioned that being at eas...

A house is a beast by itself. It enslaves and ties one up with an innumerable and inexhaustible array of chores. I rrespective of whether one has a help to assist with domestic work or one does it all by oneself, there is never a dearth of these chores to complete.  And the trap here is, being caught up in a constant whirl of chores lulls you with a false sense of productivity and achievement. The chores may vary slightly from house to house, depending upon what chore falls on your head to what gets done by the help, but the essence is this -KEEP CLEANING TILL YOU DIE. Don't you agree?  The chores come in varying degrees... everyday chores that includes  Cooking -the one major activity that involves a hoard of sub activities around it -starting from grocery shopping, shopping for veggies, breaking your head as to what to cook today / tomorrow/ this whole week-morning & evening, chopping the veggies, cleaning the kitchen after the cook & ...

It so happens that the thoughts circling in my heart gathers a critical mass tumbles out as words. More often than not, the words carry no meaning. Such words are just content to stream out through my fingers into a word document, typed out in a haste, full of spelling mistakes...never to be read again. But at other times, the words twist with another deeper urge within -the urge to share that which is inside me with others. I would be lying if I say that these words are like a window to my soul. They are just a reflection of a temporary state of mind, which may make no sense to me, if I were to revisit it at a later point of time. But right now, these words are my world. The unfiltered expression of all that is going on inside me.  This makes me wonder. Why is it that we feel this need to share a piece of ourselves with others? Why this urge to express oneself?  If we were to just observe for a minute, everyone of us expresses & strives to share our in...

If this was a place to dream, what are my dreams? No filter, no second guessing. Just jotting down all that comes to my mind, without any judgement, without any rational thinking, without logic and without self-criticism. Here it goes To make people kinder. Where all interactions are based on kindness and respect No division in the name of religion. Faith to unite, than divide -where we all bow down with respect to other religions, knowing that it is one God and She is in us, as us. For every tree that is cut- 4 more trees spring up in its place! The earth and its elements are pure again -no plastic, no pollution -the planet pure and pristine Humans no longer feel that they are the superior creations -but understand that they are a part of the ecosystem and treat all creatures with love Where every life is safe and secure -no rapes, no murders, no execution, no prison A society that is devoid of greed!  A world without fear -even fear of death -becau...

A smile a laugh- a flash of joy and a fleeting moment of happiness. The same joy curdles into sorrow, the same laugh morphs into tears. The drama goes on and on –day and night, without a pause. I wake up, brush, bath, eat, work, eat, work, eat and sleep and thus, another day starts. I may fool myself that by taking away the “work” part, my life may become more fun, but who can ever remain, even for a moment, without doing any activity –physical or mental? In this framework, infused are the little twists and turns in life. No matter where I am or what I do, I still follow this rhythm of life. Along comes the friends and lovers, and just as they come, they leave too. Parents, spouse, siblings, relatives, in-laws, together we all tumble along the merciless path of time –now here and now no more. Set goals, they say. Achieve something, they say. Make money, build a house, decorate it with baubles and paint your way into good cheer, travel, have kids, raise them, fill yo...

To recap, ( part1 , part 2 and part 3 ) let us quickly revisit what is called as the "Law of Cause and Effect", in Vedanta. The Rishis and Sages -the great subjective scientists, have put forth this law after a deep study of this world and the self. You can click here to hear Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda explain the law in detail (highly recommend this short 7 minute video) 1. There can be no effect without a cause - (Eg., no waves without ocean) 2. The effect is nothing but the cause itself in a different form -(Eg., the waves, bubbles, foams, whirlpools are nothing but the ocean itself) 3. When cause is removed from the effect, nothing remains (Eg., no waves, bubbles, foam etc when there is no ocean) Now, applying this to ourselves, it is evident that this entire universe of names and forms, including this physical human body, is nothing but the effect. The cause of all these names and forms is the One Supreme Truth. It is this One Cause that is manifesting...

No matter how many examples are given, no matter in how many different ways this Truth is repeated over and over again by different Masters from times immemorial, we still can't accept that we are one -WE ALL ARE ONE, encompassing the entire universe. Even after exhaustive inquiry into the nature of things, we may come to intellectually understand that we are one, but since we lack experiential understanding, we struggle to accept this. Listed below are some thoughts on this struggle. What are the practical difficulties that we face in bringing about this acceptance? The God and the Devil: Most of us are convinced that there is only one God. However, our religions talk about the eternal struggle between good and evil and how God, who is all good, fights and conquers the demons / rakshasa / satan etc, who is evil incarnate. So automatically, there comes this mental image (at least I had this for a long time, thanks to all the pauranic movies and serials that I sa...

We all intuitively know about this oneness . However, our identification with our own body, mind and intellect creates a strong and distinct feeling of “me and everything else that is not me” . And this me is so so so small and tiny that it extends only upto the boundary of our own body. So we identify with this small part of Our whole and struggle through this life, being tossed up and down in the waves of joys and sorrows. However, when we slowly expand our sense of identification with All That Is, then our individual ego disappears and we become our True Self –the glorious infinite and absolute. All this is fine, but it seems very wild to even begin to imagine us as something other than this body. The attachment to the body is so strong that even though we can intellectually and to some extent intuitively understand that we all are one, we cannot but shake off the feeling of I ness and my ness that is associated with the body. The Masters, in all their kindne...

The most difficult thing as a student of Vedanta is that, it asks the us to walk the talk...and the talk itself is so lofty and high that sometimes, it almost makes me whish that I didn't have this knowledge, so that I could have continued living as I was. The one thing that kind of blew my mind when I finally understood and comprehended is the vision of oneness. It is so simple and evident that it made me smack my forehead for missing something so obvious that was right in front of my eyes. Before I write about what is the difficulty in this, let me quickly run through what this oneness is all about. I, with my limited understanding, come to completely believe and live with the conviction that I am this body. I + body gives raise to the feelings of me and mine -My house, my clothes, my father, my children, my husband, my money and so on. Life, as we know it revolves around this "I". It is this "I" that makes us believe that we are separate entitie...

This new year, I have a confession to make. A freak injury has me sitting out of any forms of exercise for 3 weeks. The doctor's advice of not sitting down cross legged and not exercising for three whole weeks was a complete shocker. I have never gone without exercising for three whole weeks ever since 2008! While it is only day 5 of 21, this no exercise rule has left me with more than one and half hours of extra time every day and has also got me thinking about my lifestyle in general and my weight in particular.  I have never been a skinny person. Broad shoulders, long limbs and wide hips, I have a frame that will make me look like a skinny buffalo even if I lose weight. While in the final year of my UG, it finally dawned on me that maybe I have to lose some weight, as I started sporting a nice round small paunch that slightly stuck out of my dress. I started walking in my terrace for one hour every day and cut down on curd and viola, within 4 to 5 months, I ...